blurt

… I don’t want no dead end job … don’t wanna be no number …

I spotted this on LinkedIn this morning in someone’s signature:
“Experienced, Professional Virtual Assistant, Certified Professional Resume Writer, and LION”

There are certified professional resume writers? Seriously? How (and probably as importantly, why) does one get certified to write resumes? And what the hell is a professional virtual assistant? How do you pay a tamagotchi?

Now, I live in L.A. where “slashed” job titles are all the rage. You know what I mean, “actress/real estate”, “actress/life coach/motivational speaker”, “actor/construction”, “model/insurance sales” and so on. The “sexy” job is always the first one mentioned, the one that the person really wants to be able to do full-time, but just isn’t good enough at to do.

In a town that has people paid to be “fluffers”, “grips” and “gaffers”, and where casting agents refer to themselves as “artists”, odd job titles are everywhere.

Now all I need to do is find my next one.

… come on … everybody sing … do the right thing …

Although I was a bit late to the party, I watched An Inconvenient Truth a few weeks back. In my post-movie, environmentally-friendly haze, I decided that I’d try and replace all of the light bulbs in my home with compact fluorescent ones. You know, CFLs, those spiral shaped ones that draw little power and last for years and years.

I went to Home Depot the next day and found their massive selection of bulbs. I grabbed some for my outdoor motion-sensor lights, some for my bathroom lights, some for my kitchen, but could not find any bulbs that could be used with three-way lamps or dimmers… in Home Depot! where they have EVERYTHING! So I stopped at Albertsons on the way home — nope, none there either. They still have a big selection of incandescent bulbs, but I’m on a mission here.

I brought home those that I could use and put them in to use. I jumped online to find some dimmable and three-way bulbs. I was shocked and surprised to discover that they’re not that easy to find online either. The only place that I could find that sold what I wanted was an Ace Hardware Outlet in New York. This is crazy, I thought, but I placed an order anyway and as of yesterday, I have a bunch more lights and lamps using the CFLs. So, lesson number one is that these things are tough to find, but that’s not the worst of it.

I have a beef with packaging. The wasted paper and plastic that goes in to the packaging of goods for sale these days is crazy. On top of that is the way they do that hard molded plastic that’s secured by heat-sealing the pieces together into sharp-edged, ridiculously hard to open containers. You NEED a knife or scissors to open them, forget about trying to tear them. You know the ones I mean. Well, the CFL manufacturers, in all their environmentally-friendly wisdom, have decided to use such packaging for their products. I feel like, while I’m trying to do the right thing here, they’re fixing one thing and breaking another. Why not use compact, recycled paper packages, like regular bulbs are packed in? I recognize that the bulbs are a little more fragile, and that due to their contents they need to be secured a little more tightly, but it’s silly that one good move is offset by an equally bad one.

Mr CFL manufacturer, please, rethink your packaging. Mr CFL retailer, please stock more options. Mr Consumer, please do what you can too.

And after this public service announcement, I now return you to your regular schedule. Please move along.

… fight on … to victory … fight on! …

I’m not exactly from around these parts, but in the past eight years or so, I’ve become a big fan of college football. I didn’t go to college in the U.S. so I don’t have a specific team that I have an undying allegiance to. That said, I get to watch and enjoy a lot of games for the simple pleasure of watching the game. You should also know that while I love college football, Sunday’s version bores me. The NFL is too hyped, too long, has too many morons playing it, and seemingly more morons calling and “analyzing” it.

Tonight, I’m in the midst of watching the Sugar Bowl. Hawaii are playing in their first ever BCS bowl game, and not doing all that well against Georgia. The BCS games, in theory, should be the best that college football has to offer. Sometimes, the games don’t turn out that way, but my pain tonight isn’t with the game itself.

Unfortunately, a few years ago, FOX bought the rights to broadcast four of the BCS bowl games each year. These are the only college football games they will show each year. Yes, the FOX Sports regional channels do cover college football, but not the broadcast FOX network. They do, however, broadcast NFL games each week during the season, and it is from that experience that they approach the college games.

College football is about heart. It’s about passion. It’s about the pageantry that goes along with being a student or alumnus, the bands, fight songs, history. It’s about never knowing what might happen next, trick plays, thrilling overtimes that don’t end at the first field goal at the end of the first drive. It’s about fun. Sure, there is a high quotient of frat boys and sorority girls, but that’s offset by the low number of thugs and morons who seemingly attach themselves to the NFL.

FOX doesn’t seem to understand any of this. Instead, we get rehashed graphics, animations and interstitials on screen, and the same old military-inspired soundtrack. Where ESPN and ABC have (with a few exceptions) knowledgeable, relevant and capable analysts and callers, FOX have rolled out Jimmy Johnson and (a shadow of) Fran Tarkenton to provide pre-game analysis. And why is it that almost all FOX play-by-play callers sound like Joe Buck? Look, the camera work and overall production are great, the HD pictures look fantastic (NBC has the worst HD picture, by far), but those are about the only redeeming qualities. Oh, and Chris Myers as the sideline reporter is better than a lot of the token female sideline reporters that ESPN uses. But where are the fight songs? Why can’t we hear the bands beyond a slight muffle in the background? I also kind of miss the cheesy ads placed by the participating colleges — you know, “most of us are going to go pro in something other than sports” and the like.

The Capital One Bowl was the best game played today. The Rose Bowl was a blowout, but it’s always good to see USC win big there. ESPN and ABC (yes, I know, basically the same people) did a fantastic job covering the lead-up and games. They understand college football and present it in the right manner. The College Gameday show, while a somewhat tedious experience with Lee Corso in his element, is a good example of the passion people have for this game. Honestly, the only thing that could make the FOX coverage worse is if they used Petros Papadakis as the in-game analyst.

Please, when the contract is over, Mr Murdoch, please don’t renew it. Let ABC and ESPN do what they do best. And Mr Disney, if you can, please talk Keith Jackson into bringing back “the voice” of college football.

Whoa Nellie, that would be good!

p.s. College football doesn’t belong in domes either.

… whack fol the daddy o … there’s whiskey in the jar …

If you’ve ever wondered about that photo up at the top of the page (assuming I haven’t changed it and it is still a picture of some guys drinking), there is a very short story about it.

I was in Ireland, with some friends and their band, on tour. The only show played outside of Dublin was in Cork, which is a few hours drive to the south-west of the capital. We arrived late in the afternoon, and went to the pub, The Lobby, to set up. After doing that, we took a quick wander around the neighborhood. It was beautiful — the pub sat on the intersection on one side of a bridge. Across the street was a big old bank, lit up with yellow lights shining up the facade of vertical columns. The sun was going down over the mountains, and the lights were reflecting off the river. And somewhere, thousands of miles away, the world was going about its business.

While we waited, a couple of us wandered in to the little bar next door, and found the only seat to be a small piece of wood sitting atop three kegs, immediately behind the bar, under the stairs, next to the narrow hall that led to the bathrooms. I had my camera with me to take some shots of the show later on, but lifted it up for some unknown reason, turned off the flash to avoid pissing anyone off in this dark little room, and snapped. The picture above is the end result.

I don’t know anyone in the photo, they were all regulars, and no-one stopped to wonder why this guy was taking their picture. But, to me, it perfectly captures the feeling in that little pub that night, and a feeling that has bubbled up in many little pubs just like it that I’ve wandered into over the course of my life. It’s a welcoming feeling, a comforting feeling. There is a warmth to it, one that is hard to match. In that room, on that night, I was lucky enough to find myself in just the right place.

And then I got drunk and got lost on the walk home.

… beep beep … beep beep … yeah …

I was driving home the other night and while sitting at a red light, the driver behind me starting randomly honking his horn. I looked in the mirror and the guy wasn’t even looking in my direction. I tried to work out why he might have been doing it, but had no idea — the light was still red, there was nowhere for me to go, my lights were on, no indicator flashing. I was stumped, and he seemed focused on something on his passenger seat anyway.

When the light changed, we took off, and the random honking continued for a little bit and then stopped. At the next light, it started up again, but now he was in the lane next to me. I turned off that road, cut through some back streets to make a stop at an ATM, and when I pulled back on to a main road closer to home, I hit another red light. All of a sudden, this honking starts again, I look up and there is the same car.

At that moment, it dawned on me that it wasn’t the driver (who had both hands on the top of the steering wheel), his car had Tourette’s!